I have to disclose that the type of article I’m about to discuss makes me feel homicidal. This is an old article from 2007, and readers have pointed it out to us before, and I believe maybe Maria linked to it once? I don’t know, but it’s familiar. A reader, shre, sent us this link again: Vanity Fair’s Christopher Hitchens article entitled “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” Hitchens gets some help from Fran Lebowitz and Nora Ephron.
Hitchens describes how the ability to make women laugh is an evolutionary necessity for men to attract female mates. That’s completely stupid, despite his obligatory citation of a study he thinks backs it up. But this was the bit that really pissed me off. He’s talking about the ability to make a potential mate laugh:
Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men, if you catch my drift.
Really? Let’s ask all the wallflower women who got shoved to the sidelines because the boys and later men didn’t notice them. Let’s ask all the fat girls who later lost the weight and noticed a helluva difference in how many men tripped over themselves to light their cigarettes. Let’s ask all the women whose bad acne cleared up. In short, what Hitchens means by “women” is “women who titillate my penis.” Like so many men, he isn’t even aware of the existence of physically unattractive women who, like physically unattractive men, sure could use an ability like humor as an alternate inroad with potential mates. But as long as men are uncomfortable with funny women, or feel upstaged by them, or just sort of fail to process that yes, Virginia, that’s hilarity coming out of a female larynx, being funny won’t get women anywhere with men.
So, extending Hitchens’ theory with logic, being funny helps men get to bed with women who are way cuter than they are, but women who would like to date men better-looking than themselves should not exist.
Otherwise, the article is not actually as heinous as the headline makes it sound. Hitchens states that women are often funny and make good comedians. His point is simply that men desperately need humor as an evolutionary advantage, but women don’t since we are all uniformly the tall thin Caucasian-featured double-E-titted silky-straight-haired perfect-skinned creatures that drooling manboyz (particularly in L.A.) feel entitled to be with. It’s his assumption that he can accurately assess the situation of women competing for men that stinks of male privilege. He’s in no position to know, as indeed he doesn’t know, but he thinks he knows, for he is a man.
And I can’t decide if this point is worse, or just sadder. The poor fool somehow missed the fact that this laugh:
I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight
Is something women have been trained to manufacture for centuries, because, we were taught, you get yourself a man by appealing to his ego, and men like to think they’re funny, even though they usually aren’t. It’s the same reason women fake orgasms.
The male attempt to make women laugh is not about impressing women. It’s about men impressing themselves.
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I still think I’m funny.
The thing I find fun… curious is that Hitchens, from what I’ve heard him say, equates it with telling jokes. Telling jokes is the lamest kind of humor there is. Seriously.
But you make a great, awesome point – I know that in school, I never went dancing (hate it), I am not an underwear model, and I use humor as a coping mechanism – but I fully expect any human to do so, or similarly.
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
“Hitchens describes how the ability to make women laugh is an evolutionary necessity for men to attract female mates. That’s completely stupid”
-Exactly. Thanks for this intelligent, insightful and funny review.
Clarissa(Quote) (Reply)
My mom told me when I first started dating that the best way to get a smart, funny, compassionate partner who respected me was to be a smart, funny, compassionate person ready to respect whoever I fell in love with. This advice is some of the best ever given me. Hitchens as you said forgets one side of the equation entirely except to dismiss it. Funny women pick funny men, and funny men pick funny women. It goes both ways.
But Hitchens comes from a culture that interprets the phrase “good sense of humor” when applied to men to mean “tells good jokes” and when applied to women to mean “laughs at good jokes”.
As for that laugh, you’re right. So many of my friends were taught by their mothers and other friends and by society at large that if a boy made a joke and they didn’t laugh, whether because they found the joke offensive, or because they just didn’t think it was funny, word would get around. They would be branded as humorless bitches. If the boy was their boyfriend, he would dump them. If he wasn’t, she would never have a chance with him. And of course they were supposed to want a chance with him.
If there’s an evolutionary basis for humor (and I don’t have a lot of faith in EvoPsych), it might have much less to do with sexual selection, and a lot to do with the fact that as a method of defusing tension, it could strengthen community bonds among early humans. But they never think about anything that doesn’t fit a gender binary.
Oh God, because I said that it was women who taught my friends to laugh that way I’m going to find one of those creeps who blames the patriarchy on women, aren’t I?
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
WHATEVER. Clearly he’s never been to my house, because I’m hysterical. (cue double-snare-drum plus cymbal) SEE WHAT I DID THERE? HIYOOOO, I’m here all day.
And cosign at the manufactured laughter to please men bit. I don’t toss my head back, nor is my laughter “deep-throated” (…subtle) with mirth; one could say I guffaw, gasping for breath and clutching my sides, on occasion I snort, and I have been known to chortle, snicker, and giggle without flirtatious connotations. “Peal(s)” of delight are often nothing more than a loudly bellowed, “HA!” before I dissolve into a fit of yuks and chuckles. Sometimes I also do that sorta silent laugh where your face gets all red, or I kinda hiss, too. Oh, and in middle school I was the one in my group of friends who would shoot milk out of her nose if you told a joke while I was eating. Sexy.
What I’m saying is, wasn’t there a Mary Poppins song about this??
Also, bee tee double-yew? My teeth are not for you to comment on, either, homeslice.
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
From the artical:
“So you could argue that when men get together to be funny and do not expect women to be there, or in on the joke, they are really playing truant and implicitly conceding who is really the boss.”
Okay, now I just want to kill him. “Pussy power, women rule the world! We are merely slaves to them, never mind the 66 cents on the dollar, rape, and domestic abuse!”
And Jewish humor as by definition male? My Jewish heart shrivels at the thought.
He also talks about how jokes often aren’t funny in the company of women… doesn’t that disprove his point? If the jokes aren’t funny to women, they can’t be to attract a mate! The thing is, the reason a lot of the jokes aren’t funny to women is that they’re frequently cruel to us. But men still crack them in the company of women, whereas women by an large are taught to shut up in the company of men! When we crack a joke at a man, or men’s expense in the company of men the backlash is often scary.
“They are innately aware of a higher calling [motherhood] that is no laughing matter.
the incoherency of rage is beginning to set in. Oh yes, the higher calling for all women!
He also talks about how women don’t find aging funny in the same way men do. Might that be because society doesn’t give women permission to age, even as our biology forces us to? Men get the privilege to find it funny. Mind, a lot of the women I know joke about it. They just do it far away from men. Joking about it means calling attention to it, and we must not let men remember that women grow old!
“People in this precarious position do not enjoy being laughed at, and it would not have taken women long to work out that female humor would be the most upsetting of all.”
This is true in a way he doesn’t intend. As the patriarchy weakens, more and more is written about how women aren’t funny, and women are less and less allowed to be funny.
“Is there anything so utterly lacking in humor as a mother discussing her new child?”
He has never met my cousin.
Actually, many of the jokes he makes in this article, which he presumably sees as the epitome of humor are based in mocking women. No wonder women don’t “get” them!
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
Never read the article before, but it is completely unsurprising coming from Hitchens. He is a perfect example of a man so wrapped up in his own privilege that he considers himself an expert about everything.
The evo-psych dumbassery, it burns.
The mansplaining, it burns.
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
One of the things I found particularly anger-making about this article was the theory of women being ‘quicker at identifying material they considered unfunny.’ And that this was presented as somehow indicative of women’s lack of humor, rather than indicative of a life lived where jokes about rape and physical abuse aren’t funny because they’re REAL.
Hitchens speaks from privilege not only in erasing women he doesn’t find pretty, but also in just the amount of ACTUAL fear, abuse, etc he –and other men– have to live with, day to day. I found this quote particularly illuminating: Male humor prefers the laugh to be at someone’s expense, and understands that life is quite possibly a joke to begin with—and often a joke in extremely poor taste. …(Perhaps not by coincidence, battered as they are by motherfucking nature, men tend to refer to life itself as a bitch.) Whereas women, bless their tender hearts, would prefer that life be fair, and even sweet, rather than the sordid mess it actually is.
Yes, male humor prefers the laugh to be at someone else’s expense because they don’t live their lives paying for other peoples’ privilege. Yes, male humor may laugh at the unfairness of life, but they CAN laugh at it because they don’t have to live its ‘unfairness’ every day, in silence, with an entire culture telling them how easy they have it. Male humor CAN find rape funny because they have a reasonable chance of not actually being raped themselves (I’m curious –do brothers/fathers/sons/boyfriends of rape victims find rape jokes funny on the same scale as other members of male culture…?)
This quote, too, shows an astounding ignorance of women’s lives: For some reason, women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be so riotously amusing…
Gee, what with the hypersexualization of the female body in American culture, and the emphasis on sex appeal over everything else (including humor!), and the general message that a woman is only worth what she looks like… yeah, I dunno why all those women find the inevitable loss of the only thing society values them for not funny, either.
Anyways. That’s what jumped out at me more than the erasure of non-supermodel women…
Raeka(Quote) (Reply)
Bummer. All my html tags got erased
Raeka(Quote) (Reply)
So does “lacking in humor” mean “not personally interestING TO me” OR “not personally interestED IN me?”
Our first was nicknamed Mustard Butt by the time she turned a week old and I had quite a few funny stories by the end of the first month. Imitating myself the time I thought I had killed my baby with a falling flashlight (long story) usually gets a chuckle.
Jenny Islander(Quote) (Reply)
I think his mind hears mother talking as “blah blah blah, my baby is so speshal, blah blah blah, my baby is so cute, blah blah blah, do you want your baba?” Like how the film execs think the audience does with two women talking in a movie, only with more milk and shit.
My cousin’s the same way as you. Her baby stories put the whole family in stitches.
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
though mind, he might just think “why don’t they laugh when I joke about the terrifying dangers their babies face? I find them funny. Mothers are humorless bitches. It wasn’t clear.
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
I’m rereading Age of Innocence and I just read this line (which cracks me up every time I get to it) for the third time. The main character is talking about his fiance, and for bonus points she is a perfect example of the stereotypical “pretty girl” who is mostly talked about because of her looks, he starts listing her good points and…
“…she (his fiance) had a sense of humor (chiefly proved by her laughing at HIS jokes);”
So, Edith Wharton was mocking these guys before any of us were born and they’re still around…
Joan(Quote) (Reply)
URGH, I hate jokes. I love snark, sarcasm, all witty banter, but tell me a joke and I go to sleep!
And puns. I love puns. I can never think of them so I love the imaginations that can!
Anne(Quote) (Reply)
The great thing about laughing when men who think they’re funny tell jokes is that laughing AT them is just that much easier.
When I am interacting with people I love to be intellectually stimulated–the best way to do that with humor is equal sides contributing. So, witty banter is the best kind of humor to me, and why I love witty banter couples on TV. Joss tends to supply the most of these for me. XD
Anne(Quote) (Reply)
Otherwise, the article is not actually as heinous as the headline makes it sound.
I found this sentence very misleading. It’s even worse than the headline makes it sound. I read all three agonizing pages and didn’t understand a word of it. By “understand”, I mean, “comprehend how anybody could be so clueless”. Especially when he started rhapsodizing about how women are so unfunny because we have babies and the weight of our biological responsibility to the species chokes our sense of humor to death. Because it comes down to the babies, you guys. Always, always, the babies. (And this guy says women are obsessed with baby-making?)
He makes your point for you about conventionally-unattractive women resorting to humor and wit to get attention: “Most [female comedians], though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish (me: The hell?), or some combo of the three.” He assumes this is because they’re exceptionally masculine in nature and that’s what makes them appreciate humor more, when really, like you said, it’s because when you aren’t pretty, it helps a lot to be clever.
For another example of him refuting himself (he does a lot of this in the article), at one point he admits that maybe men actually don’t want women to be funny because certain things (like castration) that men find funny amongst themselves would be humiliating, or even frightening, coming from women. Then, in the same paragraph he says that women simply don’t find certain things funny at all, ever, regardless of whether or not the joke is coming from a man or men are substantially present. Say what now?
Oh, and then! Whilst going on about how “women are really the ones who run things, you guys, and male humor is about one-upping natural female authority (what?)”, he says this: Anyway, after a certain stage women came to the conclusion that men were actually necessary, and the old form of matriarchy came to a close. (Mencken speculates that this is why the first kings ascended the throne clutching their batons or scepters as if holding on for grim death.) People in this precarious position do not enjoy being laughed at, and it would not have taken women long to work out that female humor would be the most upsetting of all.
So…wait. Women are naturally unfunny compared to men because we’re so very sensitive about the gravity of life and men most definitely are not, but even if women were funny, we couldn’t express it openly because the men are so very extremely sensitive about life? What the hell kind of Gordian knot is this?
Whenever people say that women aren’t as funny as men, or as immature, fun-loving, random, vulgar, or any of that, I just find that the funniest joke of all. I’m active in fandom, and all that crap this guy says women don’t do or say or laugh about, just because women don’t do it in his presence? Yeah, women readily do in female-centric spaces. We’re just as crude, rude, and silly as men are when we know it won’t lose us points in attractiveness, same as for guys, most of whom know better than to break out the same dead baby jokes with a female date that made his buddies spew milk the night before. The assumption that whatever women don’t do amongst men, we don’t do at all, is just so narcissistic I can’t even process it.
Basically, to repeat what many have said before, men don’t want to be incessantly made fun of, they don’t want to feel obligated to laugh at stupid jokes to appeal to a potential partner’s ego, they don’t want to put up with humor that makes them uncomfortable just because it amuses the hell out of the opposite sex. But when women say we feel exactly the same way, we just have no sense of humor.
darkmanifest(Quote) (Reply)
I strongly suspect you’re right when you say humor could be more about social bonding. Even establishing dominance (ever noticed guys doing their best to laugh convincingly when the boss cracks a joke?). Then again, sex is probably about all those things, too. (I also share your lack of faith in EvoPsych, or more accurately, tend to want to stab between the eyes anyone who claims to KNOW that a particular trait is an adaptation for a particular thing. There are so many possibilities, and they rarely consider any but the first that come to mind.)
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
If you let me know what needs editing, I can fix it for you.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
In hindsight, I think my brain glazed over and I stopped taking in the fail at some point. But then I’ve also dealt with so many men who really think just exactly like this guy, narcissism and all, that sometimes it turns out I’m too inured to the fail to do a review of it justice.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I think in the opening paragraph of this “Women Aren’t Funny” article, he made a “joke” (if you could call it that) about watercress lettuce and filet mignon or some shit? Yeah, that guy is the epitome of schwarmy, privileged DOOOOOOUUUUUCHE!
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
“Jewish (me: The hell?)”
So I guess he doesn’t like Sarah Silverman ‘cuz he’s a WASP-y anti-Semitic DOOOOUUUUCHE and her brutal humor threatens his penis. >_<V
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
ILU. This is such a fundamental truth it’s sometimes boggling to think someone doesn’t get that.
Seriously, I can’t fake interest/amusement. If something’s not funny, it’s not funny – I wouldn’t expect someone to indulge me for saying something boring that I thought was witty as hell. It’s uncomfortable, but so’s life. I do not HAVE to laugh just to make a guy feel better. I laugh because something brings me joy or is funny, and the harder you try to outwit or outfunny me, the less I will be likely to laugh. It is not a contest.
I also wonder why dry humor is discounted here a bit too. I have a very, very dry sense of humor that is never going to make anyone guffaw. Somehow this is, then, not “really” funny? I call bullshit.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
“The harder you try to outwit or out-funny me, the less I will be likely to laugh. It is not a contest.”
Yecchh, I hate that “competition as flirting” shit…there’s so much tension/resentment and it is NOT! SEXUAL! (TENSION!) I don’t want to see a guy I like as some sort of raibaru*!
(*sorry for the Engrish)
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
The frustrating part for me has always been picking up that vibe of “I can’t let her be the funny one!” – and addressing it only results in me being the nasty bitch. Just … be yourself, don’t try to prove yourself or be who you think I want, because that air of falseness does not set the mood at all.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
No no no. If you look at the italicized section again, you will see that he’s saying women can’t express their humor openly because men are so very extremely sensitive about their unearned privileges. Only he couldn’t put it that way because he can’t acknowledge the existence of unearned privilege.
Kathmandu(Quote) (Reply)
Raeka, I know a father and grandfather of child rape victims, who think rape jokes are funny, (and that rape victims ask for it, even 8 year olds).
magpie(Quote) (Reply)
In my experience, I always felt SUPER threatened by guys who think they have to be funnier than me because I was ALWAYS the “funny one” in all my classes/groups of friends/co-workers/family/etc…so I feel like it’s my schtick and since I have a BURNING NEED for approval from the people I want to like me, I try to be funny…but then some guy makes a pithy sarcastic statement which is “supposed” to be funny but instead makes me feel like shit and he silences me. It’s so soul-smashing.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
That was another thing that seemed weird to me –the author seemed to only be talking about that stereotypically ‘male’ humor (crude, stupid, unnecessarily shocking)… which doesn’t appeal to a lot of people, men AND women. I, too, much prefer dryer humor (British comedy movies, ftw), but I didn’t get the sense he was talking about that at all. I guess he erased it just like he erased non-stereotypically-pretty women.
Raeka(Quote) (Reply)
Eh, it was just a couple of quote tags. I think people can figure out where the quotes begin/end
Raeka(Quote) (Reply)
….that’s just… horrifying D; But I suspected as much. I was wondering more, like… statistically speaking, if you survey X number of men who didn’t know rape victim(s) personally and X number of men who did, would you find a difference in how one group or the other felt about rape jokes…?
Eh. It’s completely speculative. And I think part of me is afraid of the answer.
Raeka(Quote) (Reply)
Muwa-ha-ha, now that that’s been cleared up, I’m going to be a bitch and call men out on their unearned privilege all the time, all with a troll-grin on my face…THAT will be funny as fuck! (at least to me, ‘cuz I’m a hater.
)
(FYI, I’m not being sarcastic)
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
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